Hot Flashing My Way to an Uneasy Peace With the Years Behind...and Ahead

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Victory

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004:“I
decided I would let the dawn be the omen. If we had a spectacular sunrise, no
matter who won, things were going to be all right. A rainy, drizzly, weeping
dawn would foretell of dire consequences for our nation. Funny thing…I knew the
forecast was for sun today…knew the rain had stopped and the clouds had
scuttled away before we went to bed last night. I think I was creating a
scenario in my mind where my "good omen" daybreak was more than
likely to happen.

“But we didn’t have a spectacular sunrise. The day
dawned bright and brittle. The sun just marched up over the horizon, cold and
hard in the east. And it frosted last night…the first frost of the season. The
bright hard rays of the rising sun glittered off the sodden masses of my garden
flowers that were killed by the frost. So, tell me…what kind of omen is that?”

Wednesday,
November 5, 2008:“… dawned grey and drizzly and dark…very
much a typical late autumn day in the Pacific Northwest.

“Yet I jumped out of bed, bustled into the café and gushed to my staff and any
customer within earshot:

“Isn’t it a beautiful day!"

“And I wasn’t talking about the weather.”

Wednesday,
November 7, 2012:

Anyone carrying this picture in her sidebar for four years would certainly be expected to have something
to say about the 2012 election results.So I will not disappoint…

This
year, I made a tacit agreement with myself to keep as far away from campaign
coverage as I could possibly get—from the primaries to the conventions and through
the nationally televised stump-speech duels erroneously billed as “debates.”If I’ve
learned nothing else from closely following the two presidential elections
previous to this one, I’ve learned to loathe the hype and mistrust the fickle
whims of the American electorate—or at least as those whims are reported by our
intrepid sensation-starved media.

In
2004, I truly believed there were people out there who might be undecided about
for whom to cast their vote—folks who might be persuaded by what I believed to
be rational arguments against allowing the Bush Administration four more years
to wreak havoc upon the nation and the world.So I kept my keyboard at the ready and produced a significant collection
of political rants.As if something that
I said could change even one “misguided” mind.

In
2008, I was encouraged that the American people seemed to be so DONE with
Republican national leadership that they would set aside a centuries-old
tradition of racial bias to elect the first black president of the United
States.Frankly, I didn’t think we had
it in us.I was pleasantly surprised,
stoked for the sweeping changes I expected to follow this historic event, and
thoroughly relieved to see the back of George W. Bush and his gang of
thieves.

We
all know how that turned out.The “change”
part, that is.For the past four years,
the Republican congressional leadership, partnered with a media where the
loudest voices preach an unfettered, outrageous and irresponsible right-wing sermon,
have proven that ugly, avaricious fear-mongering did not disappear with George
W. Bush.Not only did the rhetoric
continue, it got louder and more outrageous.Birthers.“Obamacare.”Socialism.The president is a Muslim.Thinly veiled racial slurs.And some not veiled at all.

And
then there is the Congressional gridlock.The party out of power pulled out all the stops to fulfill its publicly
professed agenda—to Make This President Fail.They vilified the man and demonized his policies; and the American
people ate it up…with two spoons and a shovel.There has been little of hope and/or change allowed to escape the black
hole of Washington for the past four years.

Yet…here
it is, November 7th, 2012, and we have managed to re-elect this
man.Pundits and disgruntled Republicans
point at the closeness of the popular vote (“The Donald” tweeted about it, in
his bombastically stupid way), declare that the country is still divided and
Mr. Obama has, if anything, lost the
support of some of the folks who rallied to his cause in 2008.

I
maintain that, if anything, this victory is greater than the first.Despite four years of hounding by the
opposition, despite losing the support of progressives of his own party,
despite herculean voter-suppression efforts launched by forces interested in
assuring his defeat, despite the amnesia suffered by an American electorate
which has become largely convinced Mr. Obama caused the problems he inherited upon becoming president four years
ago (as Mr. Obama accurately predicted would happen)…

This
man—the first black President of the United States—will be President for four more years.

And
I, for one, would rather suffer through four more years of legislative gridlock
presided over by Barack Obama than see the clock rolled back on everything from
health care reform to women’s rights by a Republican administration held
hostage by extreme right wing interests.

Hail,
indeed, to the chief.Let’s all wish him
good luck.And let’s set our sights to
help him achieve it.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. --Abraham Lincoln

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Where I'm From

I am from station wagons, from kool-aid and turf-builder.
I am from the three bedroom, one bath ticky-tacky box
with the swath of weedy lawn; from lightning bugs,
June bugs, and mosquitoes the size of small birds.

From nights near as hot as the days,
spread-eagled on sticky sheets
crickets creaking, horns honking,
trains rumbling and whistling in the distance…

I am from snow to the eaves, jewel-studded ice storms
and green-black thunderstorms with sideways rain.
I am from bright red tulips, honeysuckle berries,
and worms on the driveway after a cloudburst;
from daisies, tiny wild strawberries, “Queen Anne’s Lace”
and crashing the kite into power lines.

I am from “Look what followed me home from school”
and never having too many animals. From Taffy and Rusty
and Sunny, the yellow headed parakeet, who could say
“Happy Birthday” but only when he thought
no one was listening…

I am from the women who shuttle the carpool,
punch the clock, scrub the toilet,
then climb into the bottle, the herb
or the fantasy to quiet the noise in their heads
and the men they choose to rescue
or who choose to rescue them.

From “When you meet the right one, you’ll just know”
and “Your dad was a virgin when we were married…”
I am from the dutiful eldest daughter who paired off
home made and pro-created at the appointed time,
and the other four who didn’t.

I am from the tearful Catholic and the stoic agnostic;
the rope stretched taut between belief and unbelief,
pulled one direction, then the other…
the eternal tug of war never won.

I’m from pioneers of urban exile; before the country clubs and the soccer and the Rolls Royces.
I’m from the first McDonald’s and the last Tastee Freez.

I am from the great moldering box in the upstairs closet;
roaring twenties sepias stacked on
shiny square instamatic shots, discoloring with age.
I am from the five stair-steps, the Christmas trees, the campfires,
and the blurred mountains captured from a moving car.

I am from the unlikely union of a country boy and a city girl,
brought together by Hitler and Hirohito;
and the neighborhood of compromise
that kept them both sane…almost.

On Where We're Destined to Go...

As for life, I'm humbled,I'm without wordssufficient to say
how it has been hard as flint,and soft as a spring pond,both of theseand over and over,
and long pale afternoons besides,and so many mysteries beautiful as eggs in a nest,still unhatched though warm and watched overby something I have never seen -a tree angel, perhaps,or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world to be dazzled, then to be reflective.It suffices, it is all comfort -along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birdsflying among the scarlet flowers.There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at lastto the long afterlife, to the tendernessyet to come, when time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.As for death,I can't wait to be the hummingbird,can you?

Mary Oliver

"Sometimes I go around feeling sorry for myself; and all the while I am being carried by the wind across the sky." --Chippewa saying.